


Realm of the Dead

by Katybug1992



Series: Tumblr Prompts [128]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:55:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23207329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katybug1992/pseuds/Katybug1992
Summary: It takes Robby getting a boyfriend to make Brady realize he has feelings for him and it takes Robby a little bit longer to realize that he also has feelings for Brady.
Relationships: Robert Thomas/Brady Tkachuk, Robert Thomas/Original Male Character
Series: Tumblr Prompts [128]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1139243
Kudos: 29





	Realm of the Dead

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a quote from Lizzie McGuire

This was not good. Brady and Matthew had already had to beg their dad to let them take Rob out with them for the night as long as they promised to have him back by his curfew.   
They had argued to have the curfew suspended just for the night, Rob had just won the Cup after all, but their dad had insisted that Rob be home by ten since the parade was the next day. It was now ten minutes until they had to leave to get Rob back in time and he was nowhere to be seen.

He finally spotted Matt at the bar and grabbed him, “Where’s Robby?”

“Dude,” Matty chuckled, clapping him on the shoulder, “relax. He’s got to be here somewhere, yeah?”

“Where?” Brady demanded, glaring, “I’ve looked all over. What if he’s passed out somewhere, or what if he wandered off, or -”

“Brady,” Matt cut him off, “calm down.”

“I can’t! And you shouldn’t either!”

“And why’s that?”

“If Rob got spirited away to the Realm of the Dead, who’s gonna be in trouble with mom and dad? Us.”

The amused grin fell from Matt’s face and he began to frantically look around, “We gotta find him!”

“Duh!” Brady rolled his eyes, “Okay, you do another sweep through here, I’ll look outside. Maybe he stepped out for some air.”

Brady didn’t know what he was expecting when he rounded the bar to the alley, but it was not his best friend heavily making out with some dude.

He watched them for a moment before clearing his throat, “Robby.”

Rob jerked away from the guy and whipped his head around, grinning goofily at Brady, “Hi!”

“Come on, bud,” Brady couldn’t help rolling his eyes fondly, “we have to get you home.”

“Brady, this is Derek,” Rob introduced, “my boyfriend.”

Brady froze. He didn’t remember Rob mentioning a boyfriend, or his family mentioning said boyfriend. He shook himself out of it and forced what he hoped was a friendly smile, 

“Nice to meet you. Now, Robby, we have to go or dad is going to kill me and Matty.”

“Okay.” Rob chirped back.

Brady ignored their goodbye as he texted Matty to come outside then ordered a Lyft for them.

“Who’s the tool?” Matty asked, joining Brady while Rob was still saying goodnight to Derek.

“His boyfriend.” Brady replied.

“Did dad mention a boyfriend?”

“Nope.”

“But dad has to know, right?”

“I don’t know.”

“And why didn’t Robby tell us about him?”

“I don’t know, Matty, why don’t you ask him that?”

“He’s making out right now. I don’t think he’ll be able to answer.”

“Shut up.” 

As their car pulled up, Matty walked over to Rob, pulling the younger boy away, “Hi, Derek? I’m Matthew. We have to go but maybe Rob will call you tomorrow.”

He didn’t wait for a response, just threw Rob into the car and got in behind him, laughing as Rob instantly curled up against Brady.

When they got home, Rob greeting Walt and Chantal and headed down to the basement.

“You’re late.” Walt raised an eyebrow.

“We’re ten minutes late.” Matt replied, rolling his eyes.

“Did you know about the boyfriend?” Brady hissed out, narrowing his eyes at his parents.

“Yes.” Walt replied, “Good kid. Goes to SLU.”

“He’s been over for dinner a couple times, gone to some games with us.” Chantel added, “Absolutely adores Rob.”

“And you didn’t think we should get a heads up?” Matt demanded, “Brady found them making out in a fucking alley.”

“He made it?” Chantal’s eyes lit up, “Robby didn’t know if he was going to be able to.”

“Back to Matty’s question.” Brady tried to derail the raving his mother was about to start.

“We thought he would have told you.” Walt shrugged, “He’s met the team.”

“Wait…” Brady thought back on the conversations and texts, trying to remember any references to a boyfriend.

“He never said that the dude he met was his boyfriend!” Matty voiced, coming to the same conclusion as Brady.

“What did you think he was?” Taryn scoffed as she came downstairs, “He literally tells you guys about his dates.”

“One too many hits to the head.” their little sister scoffed when they didn’t answer her and continued toward the kitchen.

“The team’s met him?” Brady looked back at his father.

“Yeah,” Walt nodded, “they like him enough.”

“Enough?” Matty asked wearily.

“Derek won Schwartzy over.” Keith chuckled, “Team Mom is on board so the guys are on board.”

“Oh.” Brady threw himself down on the couch.

“Yeah, it was cute actually,” Chantel giggled, “they went over to Jaden’s for dinner about a week after they got together. I’ve never seen Rob so nervous.”

“How did we not figure it out?” Matty sank down next to Brady.

“Too many hits to the head.” Taryn answered as she headed back upstairs.

“Shut up!” both boys yelled up after her.

“He’s a good guy.” Keith told them, “Give him a chance before you judge, yeah?”

“The Boyfriend” wasn’t attending the parade OR the festivities before or after the parade, which Brady thought was insane. Rob had won the Cup, his family was coming in, and any boyfriend worth anything would want to be celebrating with him, would want to spend as much time with Rob as possible before training ramped up.

But Rob insisted it was fine, that Derek had already stayed in town longer than he had planned and wanted to spend some time at home before the next semester started.

“Is he at least going home with you?” Brady asked, “I mean, he has to meet your family at some point and what better time than when you have the Cup?”

“He doesn’t know.” Rob shrugged, “He told me to tell him what the dates would be and he would see if he could make it work.”

“But it’s a huge deal!”

“You’re more upset about this than I am.”

“No, you’re just ignoring how upset you are about it.”

“Brady -”

“You can be pissed about this. This is a huge fucking deal.”

“He has a life away from me.”

“And that’s understandable. But if he’s serious about you, then he needs to make an effort as well. Dad said that you went home with him over part of Bye Week.”

“It was only for a couple of days, to meet his parents.”

“And has he met yours?”

“Mine aren’t just a couple hours away.”

“They are by plane.”

“Brady -”

“Sorry. I just…. I don’t understand it. It wasn’t my team that won but I was still here for the entirety of the playoffs, for all of this. Me and Matty have been here to cheer you on the whole way and celebrate with you. Just like you would have been for either of us.”

“In a way, it’s your team and city, too.” Robby smiled over at him, “You grew up running around that arena and cheering on the Blues. St. Louis is your city. Always will be.”

“We have to share it with you now.” Brady laughed, bumping his shoulder against him.

“Derek is from Jeff City, he doesn’t get...this. Doesn’t get what this means for the City. He knows it’s a big deal. He knows how important it is for me. But he doesn’t really know, you know?”

“I think I do. I still don’t get it.”

“Why are you acting weird about this?” Rob asked, “Every time I mention Derek you get all..weird.”

“Because it took seeing you making out with him to realize that Derek wasn’t a new friend. Matty and I didn’t realize he was a boyfriend and it’s just an adjustment.”

“An adjustment?”

“Matty and I have always been your number one and number two guys, you know? And now you have a new number one.”

“You’ll always be my number one guy, Brady.” 

“As long as I’m not number two.”

“That’ll always be Matty.” Rob grinned as Brady laughed, “Seriously, no one will ever come before you two.”

So, Summer dragged on into pre-season and into regular season and Brady and Matthew noticed the Robby started mentioning Derek less and less. Taryn had told them that Derek wasn’t over at the house as often as he had been before. She didn’t indicate that anything had happened, just reiterated Robby’s statement that school took up a lot of time.

“What is he even going to school for?” Matt spat out glaring at the wall as he talked to Brady.

“Law.” Brady replied, rolling his eyes. Robby could definitely do better than a lawyer.

“Robby could definitely do better than a lawyer.” Matthew responded and Brady definitely did not say that he had thought the exact same thing.

“But until Robby tells us otherwise, he’s happy. That’s what counts, right?”

“But he could be happy with someone else.”

“That’s not up to us. I don’t like the guy anymore than you do, but it’s up to Robby.”

“But, Robby knows we don’t really like Derek. So what are the chances he’ll actually tell us the truth?”

Before Brady could respond, his phone beeped with an incoming call. Pulling the phone back, he glanced at the caller ID and said, “It’s Robby. I gotta go. Talk to you later.”

He hung up before Matthew could respond and accepted the FaceTime call, “Hey!”

His grin fell off his face as soon as he saw the strained smile and red-rimmed eyes, “What happened?”

“Derek and I broke up.” Robby mumbled, not meeting Brady’s gaze, “He called me as I was leaving practice today. I haven’t told your family. They just...they like him so much.”

“But they like you best.” Brady responded, “You doing okay? Do you need anything?”

“I’ll be okay.” Robby shrugged, “I got my crying out of the way for now and Dunner’s decided that the team’s going out tonight. He told Petro what happened and that got everyone on board. I’ll have everyone sneaking me drinks all night so…”

“You wanna tell Matty or do you want me to?”

“It might be better if you do it.” Robby bit his lip, “I don’t really want to talk about it anymore.”

“Okay. Call me if you need anything.”

“I will. Thanks, Brady.”

Brady opened his mouth to say something else, but was prevented from doing so when several voices called Robby’s name and Robby quickly said good-bye and hung up.

“They broke up.” Brady informed his brother as soon as he picked up, trying to keep the smile off his face. Robby was hurting and he really shouldn’t be happy about the change in Robby’s relationship status.

“So what are you going to do about it?” Matthew asked.

“What do you mean?”

“When are you going to make your move?”

“Matty...they just broke up. Like today. Like not even an hour ago.”

“And?”

“Oh my God.”

Brady hung up the phone.

Robby doesn’t want to talk about the breakup. That much is very clear by the fact that he runs away from any mention of Derek, of the breakup, with Brady and the rest of the family, he actually snaps at Matty when Matty tries to broach the topic. He doesn’t mention it at all until he’s out for dinner with Brady the night before the Blues play the Senators.

“I might have yelled at Matty the other day.” Robby says as he stares down at his menu.

“You need to elaborate, bud,” Brady laughed, “there’s a lot of reasons I can think of that would make you yell at Matty.”

“He kept pushing me to talk to him about Derek.” Robby replied, “I mean, it’s kind of my fault. I told Matty that we broke up because we were fighting and he wanted to know what we were fighting about and I just…”

“Are you...do you still…?” Brady tried to find the words he was looking for.

“I mean, it’s been, like, a month. I feel like I should be over him, you know?”

“He was your first real boyfriend. You don’t have to rush the grieving process.”

“I’m not. At least, not really.” Robby shook his head, “Some of the guys have been giving me trouble for not rebounding and hooking up, Jaden’s good at stopping that when it goes on too long. And Matty keeps wanting me to talk about it with him, talk to him about how I’m feeling and when I’m going to be ready to move on and I just want to hit him sometimes.”

“Welcome to my life.” Brady laughed, “Being Matthew’s little brother, it’s a very common feeling to want to hit him. And you became his second little brother the minute you said ‘hi’.”

Robby laughed at that, shaking his head, “As annoying as the guys have been about it, I don’t know what I would do without them. After the first few days, they stopped treating me with kid gloves. I think Schwartzy scared them out of it.”

Brady laughed at that before saying, “If you don’t want to talk about him ever again, you don’t have to. I can try to ask Matty to back down a little, but he’s protective and hasn’t gotten to see you in person since the break-up so I don’t think it’s going to work.”

“Then distract me.” Robby demanded with a grin and how could Brady say no?

Dinner passed too quickly for Brady’s liking and he dropped Robby off at the hotel.

“Thank you. For everything, you know?” Robby said, taking his seatbelt off and turning to face Brady, “You’re my favorite Tkachuk.”

“That’s a lie but I’ll pretend to believe it so I can hold it over Matty’s head.” Brady grinned, hugging Robby over the console, “You played a good game tonight. Have a safe flight tomorrow.”

“Night.” Robby whispered, squeezing Brady a little harder before getting out of the car.

“Give my mom a hug for me!” Brady called after him.

“What about Walt?” Robby grinned in response.

“Why would I hug a man who rooted for the opposing team tonight?”

And Brady grinned widely as Robby threw his head back and laughed. 

“See you online?” Robby grinned, getting out of the car.

“Well, if I can’t beat you in real life, I can still beat you in virtual life.”

“Gross.” Jordie says when Robby makes it up to his room.

“What?” Robby asked, looking down at his shirt to see if he dropped something on him and Brady didn’t tell him about it because while he loved Brady, Brady was still a Tkachuk, which means that he’s still a pain in the ass.

“You have that love-sick puppy look you get every time you talk to the younger Tkachuk.” Jordan responses.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Robby huffs, grabbing his pajamas and going into the bathroom.

“Sure.”

And Jordan Kyrou needs to remember who the real rookie between the two of them is. And then Robby feels bad about that thought but he did not have a “look” after being around Brady.

Okay...so maybe he did...maybe it was one of the things he and Derek fought about occasionally… 

But Robby didn’t have feelings for Brady Tkachuk. That would be crazy. And - if he did have those feelings that he definitely did not have - there’s no way Brady would return them. Matthew would have said something because Matthew couldn’t keep a secret to save his life. Although Matty had made a shit ton of joking passing remarks which is very on brand for him.

And that’s how he comes to the realization that Brady does feel something for him. And that’s how he comes to the realization he also feels something for Brady. And he cannot deal with this right now. He needs an adult. Like a for real adult. And his two go-tos would be incredibly biased.

“Schwartzy in room 501, right?” Robby asks as he rushes out of the bathroom.

“Yeah,” Jordan responds, “Why?”

“I just… I need to talk to him.”

And with that, Robby is out of the door, missing the look Jordan gives him that definitely says the slightly older boy thinks he’s crazy.

He tries not to sound too frantic as he bangs on Schwartzy’s door while calling the older man simultaneously and knows he failed when the door swings open and Jaden doesn’t even look a little annoyed and looks very concerned. He probably should have put shoes on…

“What the hell?” Jaden asked, because real adult? Yes. Subtle? No. 

“I just realized I may have feelings for my best friend.” Robby rushes to say because as much as he knows Jaden is his best option, Jaden is also likely to shut to door in face if he doesn’t get right to the point.

Jaden looked at him for a minute before stepping aside and letting Robby rush into the room.

“Okay,” Jaden sits him down on the end of one of the beds and pours water into the coffee maker, “start from the beginning.”

And as Robby does what he’s told, the water finishes heating up and Jaden is putting a bag of the supplied camomile tea in the mug.

“You do know he returns those feelings, right?” Jaden asked as he hands Robby the cup of tea, sounding more cautious than judgemental, “Like, painfully obviously.”

And this is why Robby went to Jaden. Because Schwartzy gives people shit, he’s sarcastic, and will occasionally lie to you just to make you freak out (he once told Schenner that dinner was at 7:30 instead of 7 and then sat there stone-faced as Schenner arrived thirty minutes late and was chirped to hell and back). But Jaden would never, ever, lie about something important, would never use something like this to mess with Robby.

“Yeah?” Robby looked up at Schwartzy, who had remained standing (Robby’s inner voice told him it was because he liked to feel tall occasionally).

“Yeah.” Jaden gave him an almost affection eye roll that totally gave away that he actually cared.

“Okay.” Robby nodded, taking another sip of the tea.

“Are you feeling better?” 

“Yeah.”

“Then get out. I need to go to bed.”

Robby grinned, standing up and hugging Jaden before heading back down to his room.

Robby knows Brady’s schedule as well as he knows his own - in retrospect, this should have been a major hint - and he knows that if he takes an Uber to Brady’s, he’ll have five minutes before he needs to get back in the Uber to get to the airport. He double checks his timing with Jaden and then he’s on his way.

Brady opened his door quicker than Robby thought he would and looked very concerned to see him, “Rob-”

Robby didn’t say anything, just looped his arms around him and pressed their lips together, Brady returning the kiss enthusiastically.

“I love you,” Robby breathed as he pulled back.

“I love you, too.” Brady responded, pulling Robby back in.

Robby let himself be pushed against the wall for a minute before pulling away, “I have to. My Uber’s waiting downstairs to take me to the airport. But call me tonight?”

“Yeah,” Brady grinned, pressing another quick kiss to Robby’s lips and enjoying the little whine he let out.

Despite going a little over his allotted five minutes, he got to the place around the same time as the rest of the team and he tipped his Uber driver generously.

“You okay, kid?” O’Ry asked, and Robby guessed that he didn’t look any less frantic than he did before.

“Yeah,” he grinned widely, looking over at Schwartzy, he said, “perfect.”

“Proud of you, kid,” Jaden replied, ruffling his hair as he made his way to the back of the plane.

Robby got himself situated in his seat and saw to texts come through.

He rolled his eyes at the one from Matthew: “You made me lose a bet with dad”.

And one from Brady, which made a truly ridiculous grin spread across his face: “I love you, too.”


End file.
